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How to leave your credit card company

Leaving your credit card company can be difficult, and not just because excess credit is intoxicating.  Most credit card companies have a SWAT team of highly trained retention agents who are rewarded for successfully talking you out of your intended result.  I myself have helped to build teams of skilled diplomats and negotiators, armed with discounts and special offers to help change your mind and keep your business.  Some retention teams are more brutish, using frustration and process barriers to make it too difficult for those with little patience.

If you follow my blog, you will know I had over 13 credit cards open for mystery shopping and to review mobile banking.  Recent privacy breaches and just too much open credit led me to cancel seven credit cards from a variety of banks including Citi, Chase, Discover, and BofA that I used infrequently.  The following is a summary of the tactics used and effectiveness of each of these six programs at keeping my business.

Voice Response: 
Most card companies use VR as an effective triage of inbound calls to help the customer figure out where they want to go, balance inbound volume, and provide a first layer of tracking on customer intent.  A well designed VR flow can be easier than speaking with a person.
BofA, Chase, Discover, and Citi all offered a very intuitive VR experience.  They recognized the phone # I was dialing from and were able to provide my balance and recent transactions before asking my call reason. This is a big win for card companies since about 40% of inbound calls are simple balance requests that can be handled up front.

Speech Recognition: These same companies also employ speech recognition capability to direct the call based on my spoken instructions.  This is a solid benefit in the case routing card cancellation requests, since companies do not want to encourage cancels by "Cancel a Card"  in their options but very much want to recognize a customer who wants to cancel and get them to the right place quickly.
Given I was calling after hours, I was actually surprised the Chase Sapphire card answered with a live agent. Even more surprising on this card, the agent was empowered to handle my cancel request directly, which made it the quickest and perhaps easiest cancel process out of all the cards (not  necessarily a good thing). 


Hold Time Messages and Offers: 
I'm a big fan of offering value add service messages and product offers to customers.  B of A clearly has the right idea on this and has integrated a rotating set of messages and offers into their hold time, including mobile banking, fraud protection, online bill pay, and an offer for a new bank rewards card.  That said, their execution was clumsy.  Do you really want to offer a new card to a customer in queue to cancel?  And have some decency to turn the messages off after 10-15 min of wait time.  My 35min hold experience with B of A meant that although I knew the messages by heart, I was much less likely to consider keeping the card under any circumstances.

Retention Specialist:
Most large scale card operations employ retention specialists.  These specialists are trained and incented to keep your business by engaging in a conversation on your cancel reason, why you use cards, and the specific benefits of the card that you just cant live without.  Like the goalie in a ice hockey team, these brave agents take a lot of abuse from unhappy customers and must be thick skinned and skillful enough to persevere.

 Why Cancel:
The first step in all cases was for the specialist to ask why are you calling.  Even though I have already stated my intent, its important for the agent to build a rapport with the customer and understand the basics of their dissatisfaction.  Once the customer reaffirms their intention to cancel, the agent inquires deeper as to the reason for cancel.  It is important here to listen closely to the backstory and fundamental cues from the customer, since a good agents will use these later to create a compelling case to keep the card.  This information is also useful for the company as they develop alternative products and save strategies based on customer feedback.

Why Stay:
Out of all of the retention calls I made, I found the discover agent to be the best equipped and capable.  They were concise, focusing on the ways I interact and use my cards.  This can be tricky since customer needs vary from cash back, points with affilliate airlines, interest rates, etc.  I also found the Discover card value proposition the most compelling, since they were able to immediately pivot in response to my statement that travel points accumulation is my most important feature.  Armed with this knowledge, the agent quickly offered to change the card's earn structure to become a travel card.  The agent was also able to offer me 0 interest for 12 months, which could be a valuable benefit for many customers.
Compare this efficient but rich conversation with the disjointed experience with USAir (serviced by Barclaycard).  The agent suggested I would lost accumulated points if I left, but then could not actually tell me how many points, despite 6 min of additional hold time.

The Extra Mile: 
In addition to making a strong save attempt, the retention agent should also stay classy to the end.  While the product may not fit my needs today, it could do so in the future.  That's why I especially appreciated both Chase Sapphire and Discover reminding me to switch any recurring payments to a new card.  They were professional, valued my time, and truly made a good case for the value of their product.  Based purely on the experiences outlined in the chart above, I would definitely consider Discover and Chase Sapphire as candidates for future business.

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